Snapshot of a Charlatan
by Scribbler
Summary: [one shot] There are only so many times you can go back, only so many times you can remember the one you lost. But a mother's love doesn't follow the rules of logic. [Mystique fic]


DISCLAIMER: Not mine, no money, just good vibes for all.   
  
A/N: I recently got off my butt and entered Lesli's XME fanart contest, and followed a few links back to Kiki's page. After poking around for a bit in her assorted updates, I discovered two pictures; one greyscale, one colour, and they prompted me to write this little number. No U-turns permitted.  
  
HELPFUL LINKS: Fic is based on these pictures:  
  
http://www.geocities.com/kikisart/mystidresscl.html  
  
http://www.geocities.com/kikisart/mystidress.html  
  
**************  
  
'Snapshot of a Charlatan' By Scribbler  
  
September 2003  
  
**************  
  
She was up here again.  
  
She didn't know why this place kept drawing her back.   
  
No, she did, but she didn't understand why she kept heeding the call. This place was painful, bleak in the extreme; yet night after night she returned, waiting...  
  
Waiting for what?  
  
It was a thought she'd contemplated rarely, preferring to let her mind clear when she reached this spot, and allow the wind to create frothy images of her memories. A tiny baby, stuffing both hands and feet into his mouth, then wailing when they wouldn't all fit. A small, dark room filled with fussing midwives and the smell of birthing blood. The tang of pine needles as she stared out across her husband's realm. The pitter-pat of raindrops on her hood as she fled that hospitable but superstitious place...  
  
The pattern was always the same. She would come, remember, and then leave again. Very simple, very germane. Very her.  
  
Yet tonight, the pattern broke, and instead of closing her eyes, she stared at the choppy water below. The river was swollen with recent excessive rainfall, waves not so much lapping as thwacking the banks, like a drowning man trying to climb ashore. White crests topped murky grey surf, ever moving; ever flowing towards whatever destination was in store for them at the end of their long journey. Even the reflection of the moon and stars above was fractured and incomplete on that shifting surface.  
  
She stared long and hard, not thinking of anything for fear that she would think of everything. Her eyes roved, searching the banks far below and tracing the path of the river downstream.   
  
What was she looking for?   
  
A small voice whispered in the back of her brain, but she pushed it away as unreasonable. She was just gazing at nothing, that was all. Staring into space...   
  
Wasn't she?  
  
She most certainly wasn't watching for anyone down there. Not even a little.  
  
The undergrowth remained silent, however, as if in commemoration of this night. Natural noises had fallen into hush, and even the night stalkers of fox and lynx were strangely absent, leaving the world that little bit drearier, that little bit more unappealing in their wake.  
  
This night was indeed special, and she closed her eyes briefly in tribute of it. This place, this sight was all she had left now. While not her all, it made up a good portion of it.  
  
How depressing, to be living solely for a memory.  
  
She had lived many lives, each duplicitous in some way, and each eager to drive her into the next. In her last, she had thought she would be happy. She had been living out the childhood dreams of little girls the world over. It had only taken one night to shake her world back then, too. It only ever seemed to take one day or night for everything to change.  
  
Now, her current existence revolved around one man - a man for whom she had no love and only the barest smidge of loyalty. He had her respect, though, and for the moment, at least, that seemed enough for both of them. He had taken her in when she needed shelter, kept her hidden from the 'demon hunters', and turned them away to keep both her and her precious cargo secure. He had helped her, and so she repaid that help in kind.  
  
Yet she couldn't forget what had come to pass to bring her so fully into his fold, and that alone was the reason why she so fought the devotion that he liked to demand of those close to him. She was grateful, yes, but she was also bitter, and she made no attempt to stop or stem her bitterness. Had things happened differently, had either he or she acted in another way, then perhaps she would have eventually allowed him a degree of loyalty. But they had not, and she had not, and he had not; and so here they were.  
  
Here she was.  
  
Up here again.  
  
She remembered that night in perfect, photographic detail. She had probably forgotten more identities than even the most accomplished of spies would ever know, but of them all, that night was most indelibly imprinted on her brain.   
  
At first, the next morning especially, she'd tried to wipe it all clean, to scrub away the remnants of memory. It had hurt too much, been too raw to look back on with anything but pain. She hadn't wanted to think on it at all.   
  
Then she had realised just how much she needed that recollection to keep going, and so had nurtured it. That was when the visits up here had started.  
  
Like a ghost, she stepped forward and onto the wooden slats. They creaked, the rope sighing and letting breaths of dust out to be whipped away by the crisp mountain air. She looked down once, and then jerked her head up again at the impossibly long drop that was kept at bay by... what? An inch and a half of mostly-rotted wood? How very comforting.   
  
The wind cut her cheek, and she shivered despite herself. Yet her grip of the rail didn't abate, and when she was halfway across the ravine she stopped, catching her breath and reminding herself that she, with all her abilities, had nothing to fear from mere empty air. Wings were but a thought away if she wanted them.   
  
She let go of her hold, and the world tilted crazily for a second. She steadied herself with only a little effort, bracing her feet bare millimetres from the edge.   
  
If anything, from here the water looked like it was picking up speed. She could almost hear the bay of wolves once more, unbearably close, their breath sticky on her hands as their teeth snapped and clacked together. She closed her eyes, ignoring the risk of falling in a single moment of intensity where she let herself go and remembered everything all over again - the discovery of Erik and her baby in the laboratory wing, the pell-mell sprint from the castle, the chase to the ravine, the struggle to keep hold of her precious bundle, and then...  
  
And then that split-second in time where she had realised that he was no longer there in her arms, but falling; down, down, too fast to catch, too slow not to see. She'd tried to go after him, but someone had held her back - Erik, grabbing her cloak and hoisting her backwards onto the rickety bridge. Later he'd told her that he hadn't wanted to see her throw her life away, though whether he spoke with compassion or the calculation to keep her by his side was, to this day, still unclear.   
  
It hadn't changed anything, however. She'd lost her baby, and though she knew he lived, she knew just as well that she could never retrieve him. He had a normal family now; one that wouldn't cart him from place to place, hiding him from prying eyes and conning wet-mothers into blindfolding themselves whilst letting him suckle because stress had taken his own mother's milk away early. In that tiny little village she'd spied upon, her son would be safe, and grow up happy. She knew it, though precognition wasn't one of her mutant traits. She just knew, the way any mother does about her child.  
  
She'd never given him an official name, saying different things to different people so that nobody could trace her and her 'demon spawn' through the mountainous Schwartzwald. She'd always referred to him simply as 'little one' and 'love' when they were alone, billing and cooing like she was a new mother all over again. When watching the couple fishing him out of the river, she'd overheard nothing by way of a name, either, and so she'd stuck to the one she'd cherished as a name for her first child throughout her own childhood, but which she had never actually used.   
  
Michael. Michael Darkholme. A good name. A solid name.   
  
His name.  
  
Blinking back her only concession to sentiment, she riffled her left hand free of the dark cloak. Her wardrobe these days seemed to revolve around dark colours, she'd noted, though it was more Erik's doing than her own. Where he got the things from, she had no idea, but they were usually heavy and thick, and almost always in the same red colour as that absurd armour he'd taken to wearing.   
  
Tonight she'd consciously made an effort to be different, marking out the occasion with a white dress she'd insisted he fetch for her. He'd called her maudlin, mourning the death of a child this way, but said no more on the matter. He didn't know that Michael was still alive out there, a genetic goldmine living the life of a small mountain town boy, and so he let her make her visits. No matter how many times she came up here, he knew she'd always come back.   
  
That kind of complacence only served to sharpen her bitterness, making her tongue sharp and her temper brutal. She'd learned to fight here, a new style, much different to her old. Before, she'd relied on duplicity first, brute strength later. Here, in the echoing caverns of the castle she'd both learned and devised her own kata, drilling herself daily until she was at the peak of physical condition. Put her in a room with a Hand assassin, and all bets were off on who would walk out alive.   
  
The cloak, loosely fastened at her neck, unclipped as she brought her hand up and fell to her feet, then into the river below. She watched for a second as it was swept away, feeling the dress blow raggedly against her bare calves, and then transferred her gaze to the small flower in her hand.   
  
One red rose. It was mawkish and over-sentimental, she knew, but for once she didn't care. The dangerous image she'd cultivated since coming here didn't matter right now, with only her to see it, and she indulged in a seldom seen softer side.   
  
Extending her fist over the side of the bridge, she paused a second, wondering what to say. She was not a talkative person anymore, but the situation seemed to demand some kind of idiom.   
  
A few stray petals tugged free of the bloom, to be whisked away into the stygian night.   
  
Eventually she sighed, settling for the most obvious phrase. She was not a poetic person by nature, and so when she spoke her voice was neither a tender whisper, nor a heartfelt choke, but a flat monotone, devoid of any emotion.   
  
"Happy birthday, Michael."  
  
His first birthday.   
  
And she wasn't there to share it. Wasn't even there to tell him it *was* his birthday.   
  
Unclenching her fist, Raven watched the rose fall into the gloom. Then, without waiting to see it hit the water, she turned on her heel and walked back to the embankment where the wooden posts were rooted. Her steps didn't falter, and her stride didn't break, as she made her way back to Erik's castle.  
  
Partway downriver, a few red petals snagged on an expensive but sodden cloak. Then a piece of driftwood arrived and seized the bundle, bearing it silently away into the night.   
  
**************  
  
FINIS.  
  
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End file.
